Bathroom Bondage

The following images were styled and produced by myself to illustrate my book LOVE ME LIKE YOU HATE ME, written with Erika Lust.

My objective in producing this set was to demonstrate that the power of bondage can be expressed and projected as easily from ordinary household objects and environments as it can from high-end fetish apparatus. In fact, the ability to fetishize familiar routines-things that we all do everyday-has to be the sexiest use of DIY that I know. Everyone showers or bathes. We know our bathrooms more intimately than any single place other than our bedrooms.

In Barcelona on a cold February day I found myself abandoned in a strange bathroom. There was no real warmth to speak of, just two weak heaters to warm me up. The slippery mosaic tiles were freezing to my feet and as I got into the bath, my discount heels threatened to slip on the tiny, cold trickle of water left in the bottom.

I was grateful to be wearing even a skimpy silk top, blue, sequinned knickers and my slave collar. Even my old snakeskin scarf, reworked as a blindfold, gave me a little bit of relief from the numbing cold. My shoulder blades, the small of my back and my firm derrière lay flat against the chilly porcelain. I felt my soft skin rise in lines of goosebumps and I was so drained of warmth that I couldn’t keep a single thought in my head.

The photographer coiled the ordinary shower cord around my shivering thigh like a metal tentacle, used it as an ankle restraint and then made its head into an unyielding gag for my chattering teeth. Water trickled from it onto my freckled chin, ran down my breasts and belly and made me shiver. Then I smiled and realised that I had achieved everything I had imagined.